


Vitals

by Ilyasviel



Series: ME Prompts! [8]
Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-31 17:30:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12137541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilyasviel/pseuds/Ilyasviel
Summary: During the raid on the Archon's ship, something happens to Sara, and Reyes lives it from the distance. How will he react to the myriad of feelings?





	Vitals

**Author's Note:**

> Another lovely prompt!  
> Angst: “What you did was stupid and dangerous and scared the hell out of me.”
> 
> Thrown to me by the lovely joz_rose, thanks luv! <3

The night is falling on Kadara. Reyes sits in his office, reading a pad, or at least trying. Worry keeps his eyes moving again and again to the little corner where he can see the rhythmic beat of her heart. He has worked on it with SAM’s help. The AI always surprises him. They chat every night when Sara falls asleep with her usual brain-death state. He imagines that SAM helps a bit to keep her sleeping while they talk, but he didn’t ask about it. One of those nights, after they had fought the big Architect on Kadara, he voiced his concerns, about not knowing if she is alright until she calls him back. SAM came up with the idea of giving him access to her vitals. The little software shows in every one of his pads and terminals. A single moving line on the lower corner that makes him feel safer, knowing that she is still alive and kicking. An alarm on his omnitool beeps when her heartbeat changes drastically, making him jump every time, but seeing how it returns to a steady pace not long after, makes him breathe easier. He knew the reason for his nerves. The Archon’s ship, it was a crazy mission, and she is going without backup, bringing a little group inside it. There are so many things that can go wrong...

He has achieved to read a full page of a report before the alarm on his omnitool begins to sound. Opening its screen, he loads the full program, her full vitals in front of his eyes. He sees her heartbeat spiking, but know that she is raiding the Archon’s ship, is understandable. But his Sara is a cold-headed woman, to have this kind of nervous reaction… what the hell is happening? And then, then the ground opened under him, and he feels his soul falling into the abyss. Her vitals had stopped. The line of her heartbeat a flat one. He feels like dying. For the first time in his life, he looked forward to the future. He has his home, his queen, a possibility to live the dream of her mother for him, of having his own family. And everything shattered in front of his eyes in seconds. He can feel the panic growing on his chest, his gaze fixed on the flat line. His free hand is grabbing the couch in a white-knuckling grasp, fear running through his veins like never before. He begins to count the seconds, feeling like dying inside with every ticking one. Ten… twenty… thirty… fifty… and then a little beat, followed by another, and then another, and soon the flat line is dancing again. A tear roll down his check but Reyes didn’t care. She is alive. He keeps looking at her vitals for several minutes more, seeing it move from calm to crazy and then to calm again. She is alive. And he needs a drink. One of those that kick your soul’s ass to the next planet.

Making sure that his face is clean of shed tears, he leaves his office, walking directly to Kian’s bar. “Give me a full bottle of tequila.”

Kian, being the good bartender he is, feels immediately that something is utterly wrong with him. “First tell me why, Reyes.” He keeps the bottle on his hands, showing it to him while he raises a brow and looks intently into his eyes.

“I’m not in the mood for that, Kian. Just give me the fucking booze and let me be.”

Feeling his distress, Kian did something he never did, moving to the back of the bar and appearing on the other side of the bar, moving closer to Reyes. They knew one another since their young days on the Milky Way. “Hey, talk to me. I have never seen you this altered.”

The hand on his shoulder seems to help him to decide. “Sara has been dead, Kian. Just for a minute, and she is fine now, but she has died, and I--”

Everything falls in place for Kian, and giving his shoulder a hard squeeze, he puts the bottle in his hands. “Here. Use it to erase the bad feelings. Think only about her coming back to you.”

With a nod, Reyes moves away from him, climbing the stairs to his inner sanctum. After locking the door, he sits back, reaching for the fallen datapad and taking a quick look at the screen. The heartbeat is still there, and he feels himself panting again. _‘Damn, Reyes! Take control of your fucking emotions!’_ He opens the bottle and drinks directly from it. The burning liquid scalds his throat in its way down. He grimaces at the taste, but instead of stopping, he takes another long gulp. When has his life turned so upside down? Since her mother passing, he just has lived for himself, for the bad and the good things, alone. Why now, from all the times, has he set so many hopes and feelings on another person? A woman who can die every single day out there?

After another gulp, he puts the bottle down on the floor. “You have fallen in love at last. And your good luck wants for you to pin over the more craziest and mindless woman on Heleus.” Falling back to the couch with a grunt, he closes his eyes, feeling the punch of the half bottle of booze he has drank in mere minutes. Sleep catches him, making him fall in a restless dream of pain and lose.

The beeping on his omnitool wakes Reyes. But this was the good one, the kind of beep that let him know that the Tempest is docking at the port. Passing a hand over his face, he tries to clean his mind. Standing from the couch, he moves to a concealed cupboard near the door, picking up a bottle of water, some stimulants to wake up his brain, and mint caramels. He still feels the aftertaste of tequila in his mouth.

He is still recovering when the door of his office begins to be decoded from the outside. When it opens, Sara waves to him from it, stepping inside. “Hello, Reyes. I just passed nearby and stopped to say _'Hi'_.”

Feeling the craving of having her confessing whatever has happened on the Archon’s ship, he keeps a stern face. “We are not on your way to the Nexus, Sara. Don’t you have to report to Tann about the mission?”

She sighs, moving closer to him and letting the door close behind her. “I sent a report. He will have to wait. After what I’ve seen… I just needed to be grounded for a while.”

“Care to elaborate?”

Sara feels that something is amiss, but can’t say what it is. “The Salarians gave their ark to the Kett voluntarily. Voluntarily! And obviously, they shared with them everything they can about the rest of the races and arks. Good insight about them as a race, don’t you think?” His face keeps the same stern look, and she begins to fidget with the hem of her hoodie. “The full ship was a living hell of bodies of our fellow pioneers. They had made things with us. To study, to learn, to--” She sighs, walking to the wall and leaning against it. “And they have exalted a Krogan. I will not explain it to you how hard is to fight against something like that. And Meridian is lost in the space, by the way. All the effort for nothing. Suvi is working on it, but for now, we don't have anything, and ah! We have a Pathfinder less because I had to choose between Raeka and a full unit of Krogan who will be exalted as soon as we left.”

“Nothing more?”

Leaving the wall, she looks into his eyes, the heat of battle returning to them. “Fuck, Reyes. What more do you need?”

Pushing the pad to her, he crosses his arms. “Look at that, low corner on the right.” She picks it up, looking at it and then to him, with a clueless frown on her face. “That, Sara, are your vitals. And for almost two minutes, you have been dead.”

The pad falls from her hands, and she lowers her gaze to the floor between them. “I--”

“Just tell me the truth, Sara.”

The air seems to have been stolen from her body, and she has to take a series of deep breaths to recover her control. “It was that or leaving the Archon to use me and then kill me.” When he didn’t change his posture, she growls, exasperated. “Fuck, Reyes! You weren't there. You can’t know why--”

“Maldita sea, Sara! Then explain it to me!”

Another growl, “The Archon laid a trap for us. He caught us in a stasis field that kept us from moving, the full team. The son of a bitch injected me with some kind of device to extract information from SAM. When he left the room, SAM got the idea of stopping my heart to trick the stasis field. It was a calculated risk. Dying trying or dying later with probably much more pain involved. And he brought me back!”

He passes his hands through his hair, worried frown on his face. “Shit, Sara. What you did was stupid and dangerous and scared the hell out of me.”

“And being an ass is your way to deal with your worries?” Sara is pretty upset with him right now. “I came directly to Kadara, to you, ignoring a direct order from Tann to go straight to the Nexus, and my welcome after the shitty mission that almost cost me my life is your scowling? No, thank you.”

She turns to leave, and Reyes hasn’t been ever so grateful of the slow decoding systems of the doors. In two strides, he is behind her, arms around her and caging her against the door. “Sara... Is just-- I lost you. And it turned me inside out.” Leaning his forehead on her crown, he sighs, inhaling the sweet perfume of her hair. The tone of his voice a perfect mix of amusement and pain. “Worst moment ever to acknowledge that I’m utterly in love with you, don’t you think?”

Her heart stops beating for a second, and she turns on his arms, facing him. “Say it again.”

“I love you, Sara Ellis Ryder. And losing you has been the worst experience of my sole existence.”

Leaning on his chest, she grabs his shirt in her hands, keeping him close. “I’m sorry, Reyes. And for your information, I love you too.” When he kisses his head, she moves her arms to hug his waist. “I’ll try to do my best not to die again.”

With a sigh, he returns the hug tightly. “Sadly for me, is the only thing I can ask you. Can you stay the night?” Her nod and a humming were enough for him, and he moves them to the couch, laying on it and positioning her over his body. Feeling her heat, her weight over his chest, her breathing on his neck… Every touch and feel make him believe that she is alive and that she is, in fact, his, as much as he is hers.


End file.
